Celebrate spring at the MainStreet Deland Association’s 13th annual Florida Wildflower & Garden Festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 23. Gardening enthusiasts will find plenty of inspiration, with demonstrations and presentations by wildflower and gardening experts throughout the day.
Join us as we explore the Tosohatchee Wildlife Management Area with local naturalists Mary Keim and Randy Snyder. We will meet in the parking lot just past the pay station. From there, we will caravan along Powerline Road and Fish Hole Road, making several stops to take in the wildflowers, butterflies, birds and beautiful scenery.
White-line sphinx moths can be found throughout the world, but are especially common in North America. They live in habitats ranging from desert to tropics and will forage on a wide variety of flowers. Their long tongues make them well-adapted to sip nectar from long, tubular blooms, and they are common visitors of night blooming flowers.
Join the Florida Wildflower Foundation on Dec. 8 for a fun, family-friendly day in the forest. Forest Service biologist Jay Garcia will introduce us to the Ocala National Forest. Learn how the scrub habitat is being managed and restored. Find out why the Forest Service is allowing people to cut down trees and how it fits into their management plan. Then we’ll caravan to the Christmas tree cutting site, where everyone with a permit will have the opportunity to pick out and cut down their very own fresh-from-Florida sand pine.
With over 1,300 species in North America alone, Tachinid flies are an extremely diverse group, yet they are often overlooked. Once you spot one, however, you’re likely to start recognizing them everywhere. Keep your eyes peeled on both flowers and foliage for these hairy pollinators. Tachinid fly larvae are known parasitoids of many nuisance bugs. How they enter their hosts varies, but once inside, all tachinid larvae begin to consume their host internally. This may sound like a Halloween horror story, but Tachinid larvae are great at keeping garden pests in check.
The redesigned State Wildflower license plate, now available at county tax collector’s offices, sports a butterfly with two species of Coreopsis, Florida’s official wildflower. Having the fluttering insect as a key part of the new design helps raise awareness of beleaguered pollinators while illustrating the critical link between them and their vanishing wild habitats.
Dr. Walter Taylor presents at the 2014 Florida Wildflower Symposium.